Are you an entrepreneur with a business idea that just can’t seem to get the support you deserve? Maybe you’ve completed a business plan but no one seems to want to read it. Or you’ve created a fantastic product that no one seems to want to buy. Perhaps you’ve pitched dozens of investors and no one seems to want to put money into your deal.

Or maybe, just maybe - your idea just sucks.

We’d all like to believe that we are a fountain of brilliant ideas, but let’s face facts – we’re not. Even the most brilliant business minds come up with a few duds from time to time. The challenge is to know how to identify the ideas that are the next big thing and to run like hell from the ones that just suck!

Know when to say when

Sometimes the best thing an entrepreneur can do is hit the “eject button” on a business idea as early as possible. Holding on to a crappy idea for too long hurts you at a couple of levels.

First, you’re probably running around to all of your contacts trying to get them excited about your new idea. You’re talking to investors, partners, potential employees, and such. The lasting impression that you’ve now created for all of your potential partners-to-be is that you are that dude with the crappy idea that wants to do business. You’re branded like the village idiot.

Secondly, you’re wasting valuable time that could be better spent on coming up with a better idea. We tend to hold on to ideas so tightly that we get very anxious about abandoning them. It’s as though if we admit that we were wrong about one idea that we couldn’t possibly have another one.

The truth is that you’ll probably have a whole bunch of crappy ideas, and if you’re lucky just one good one. There’s no reason to think that this one idea has to be the one that will spawn the next Google. If you’re smart enough to come up with one idea you should be smart enough to come up with some more. Let this one go and get on to the next one.

Don’t believe in fairytales

We all read these inspiring stories of entrepreneurs who go against all odds and are told “no” by everyone only to overcome these objections and create great companies. Unfortunately this is often a story that is much romanticized and rarely happens.

I remember the quote from Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart that went “"I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 in population cannot support a discount store for very long."

We then contrast that to the resounding success of Wal-Mart and think “there’s no way I could have a bad idea, look what happened to Wal-Mart when everyone told Sam Walton his idea sucked.” We use stories like that as an affirmation that we can simply ignore all of the negative feedback we’re getting and press on anyway.

Don’t let those stories fool you. While many entrepreneurs are told early on that their ideas are ludicrous the reality is that many of them really are. You only read about the ones that actually made it, not the ones that left the founder broke and insane drinking out of an alley somewhere (although that would make a pretty interesting story, too!)

Take a hint

There are lots of people who will ignore what you’re trying to do and write you off. That’s the way business goes. But the people that actually do listen to you and provide advice or comments that you don’t want to hear are the ones you need to listen to most closely.

If a customer says they don’t want to buy, the reason they don’t want to buy is incredibly valuable. Don’t write those reasons off as “this guy is an idiot” and assume you’re correct. If the customer is saying “no” to your idea or product, you’re the one who’s wrong, not the customer. Great companies aren’t built on the premise of calling of their customers idiots.

Smart entrepreneurs are confident enough in themselves to be able to admit when an idea isn’t going to work. They are so eager to find the “right” idea that they look at pursuing the wrong idea as a failure.

Look, it’s OK to have some crappy ideas - everyone has them. You simply need to take a long, hard look at the big idea in your head right now and ask yourself “If I jump out of a plane with this idea, do I have a parachute or a bag of bricks strapped to my back?”